Wave Accounting

RATING:

4.4

(1520)

About Wave Accounting

Online accounting software that provides features including invoicing, billing, payment tracking, payroll management, finance management, credit card processing, and receipt scanning. Wave Accounting is designed to help businesses streamline bookkeeping processes. With Wave's bank reconciliation tools, businesses can manage all bank account and credit card information in real-time to improve bookkeeping efficiency and accuracy. Businesses can also generate reports that include various data such as sales tax, balance sheet, cash flow, profit/loss, plus more. Wave's dashboard includes an invoicing tool that collects invoice payments. A small business owner can choose customizable invoicing templates based on unique business needs. Invoices can be sent via email and the so...

Awards and Recognition

FrontRunner 2024
Software Advice's FrontRunners report ranks top products based on user reviews, which helps businesses find the right software.
Wave dashboard

Wave Accounting Reviews

Overall Rating

4.4

Ratings Breakdown

Secondary Ratings

Ease-of-use

4.5

Customer Support

4

Value for money

4.5

Functionality

4.5

Most Helpful Reviews for Wave Accounting

1 - 5 of 1,421 Reviews

Jose

1 employee

Used less than 6 months

Review Source: Capterra
This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you.

OVERALL RATING:

5

Reviewed February 2021

If you're a small company just starting out this is the tool for you!

User Profile

Kari

Verified reviewer

Human Resources, 2-10 employees

Used daily for more than 2 years

Review Source: Capterra
This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered

OVERALL RATING:

5

EASE OF USE

5

VALUE FOR MONEY

5

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

5

FUNCTIONALITY

5

Reviewed May 2021

I LOVE Wave!

Overall, I highly recommend Wave if you are running a business and want low costs and an easy way to manage your finances. My business is simple and Wave makes it so much easier for me to stay on top of things and know where I need to focus my energy.

PROS

I have been using Wave since around 2015 and my books were a mess when I first began because I was doing them (not my strength) and once I heard about Wave's bookkeeping services, I couldn't believe how affordable they were. It's super easy to set up and use, run reports and know about your financials. I tried switching to QB for about 1 month and hated it, so I switched back. Lesson learned and I'm sticking around!

CONS

One thing I had to get used to was because I had my bank account connected and until the month is reconciled, when a invoice is paid I mark it paid and then the 'payment' comes in again from banking. It was easy to catch and now my Wave bookkeeper keeps all that reconciled. Thank you!

Reason for choosing Wave Accounting

I chose Wave because of a family recommendation and how easy it was for me to set up an account and get things moving. The others may have changed, but I still recommend Wave to anyone who is looking for an easy & affordable way to get their business going.

User Profile

Dedre

Verified reviewer

Luxury Goods & Jewelry, 2-10 employees

Used daily for more than 2 years

Review Source: Capterra
This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you.

OVERALL RATING:

5

EASE OF USE

5

VALUE FOR MONEY

5

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

5

FUNCTIONALITY

4

Reviewed June 2023

Easy to use free invoicing app, but it has limitations

Overall, besides the minor cons, it is still my favourite app to use for invoicing since it is so easy to use and straight-forward with a very slight learning curve.

PROS

We started using Wave for our small business as it was free to use, and extremely user-friendly. Setting up your database of products/services and adding customers are easy and makes sending invoices a breeze. Financial reporting is also easy with a variety of filters to use in order to produce the financially statements and/or reports based your chosen criteria. You can also send a monthly bill or statement to your customers.

CONS

Online payment gateways are limited to only 3 options, including PayPal, Stripe and Square. As a South African company, these options are not beneficial or even available in our country. So customers cannot pay invoices automatically upon receipt of the invoice. This is an inconvenience and we use a manual EFT workaround. Support and use of Wave Accounting in South Africa has been discontinued.

Reasons for switching to Wave Accounting

We were looking for something with more features than simply invoicing.

Samantha

Law Practice, 2-10 employees

Used weekly for less than 2 years

Review Source
This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered

OVERALL RATING:

2

EASE OF USE

1

VALUE FOR MONEY

2

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

1

FUNCTIONALITY

3

Reviewed June 2022

Not enough features and virtually NO customer support

It was fine when we had one part-time employee. But for all the real-life scenarios that pop up when you have full-time employees, it's useless. The customer service is also super disappointing and unhelpful. We only use it for payroll, which should not require much in terms of software so I can't imagine trying to use it for accounting.

PROS

I like how easy it was to set-up--that process was straightforward and the interface initially was easy to understand. Unfortunately as we needed to do more after adding a full-time employee, it proved impossible to work with or use.

CONS

For payroll you have no options, and even when they recognize this, they don't provide a solution. A good example--we had an employee who had maxed out her vacation hours, but we agreed to let her take a few unpaid vacation days. There was no way for us to do this within Wave (you get paid vacation time or nothing). I chatted and even emailed with various representatives--all of which were super unhelpful, and we ended up wasting a lot of time before just being told this isn't an option. That's another huge con--there is virtually no support. The chat bot is not only unhelpful, but real agents are usually unavailable or there's a 20+ minute wait. The system is also not improving like I'd expect. I was notified today that my card declined for some reason so I followed the instructions that Wave emailed me to try to fix it, and it's like someone wrote them without looking at Wave's website because none of the instructions match. Not only is there not a change payment button but there's a Q/A at the end of the page where a user specifically asked this question, and there's no answer! I kick myself for picking this software, and we're in the process of moving to Gusto right now.

Reason for choosing Wave Accounting

Price and what we thought was ease of use. Now the price has gone up to match competitors (but the features have not), so it was a mistake.

Janet

Internet, 2-10 employees

Used daily for less than 2 years

Review Source: Capterra
This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you.

OVERALL RATING:

5

EASE OF USE

5

VALUE FOR MONEY

5

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

5

FUNCTIONALITY

5

Reviewed November 2023

Easy to Use Online Invoicing - No Monthly Fee

PROS

No monthly fees just the fee to process the online transaction.

CONS

No telephone number for customer support just a chatbot.

Reasons for switching to Wave Accounting

My customer base grew to over 50 clients and the monthly fee nearly doubled.